A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.

28 July 2016

Most Democratic Convention speeches are at 9th grade level

Most speeches at the Democratic convention are written at the ninth grade level. That’s the rough average of scores on the Flesch-Kincaid and other readability tests for the as delivered texts of the speeches that I’ve examined (www.checktext.org is a free online readability checker that includes Flesch-Kincaid and other readability tests).

A speech, of course, is more than just prose. It’s an oral argument and a theatrical performance. How persuasive it is depends not just on the facts and logic presented, but on the speaker’s skill in bring his words and arguments alive in a way that captures the attention and engages the emotions of his audience. Thus, applying a readability test to the text of a speech provides a measure, useful I think, of the speech’s verbal complexity, but it tells us nothing about the speech’s persuasiveness and emotional impact when the speaker delivers it. Spoken language, incidentally, should be simpler than written language.